“Hey! You fella boat’s crew!
Come in spanker sheet! Flatten her down good
fella!”

He darted a look into the binnacle and took a hurried
compass bearing of the sounds Jerry was making.

“Hard down your wheel!” he ordered the
helmsman, then leaped to the wheel and put it down
himself, repeating over and over aloud, “Nor’east
by east a quarter, nor’east by east a quarter.”

Back and peering into the binnacle, he listened vainly
for another wail from Jerry in the hope of verifying
his first hasty bearing. But not long he waited.
Despite the fact that by his manoeuvre the Arangi
had been hove to, he knew that windage and sea-driftage
would quickly send her away from the swimming puppy.
He shouted Borckman to come aft and haul in the whaleboat,
while he hurried below for his electric torch and
a boat compass.

The ketch was so small that she was compelled to tow
her one whaleboat astern on long double painters,
and by the time the mate had it hauled in under the
stern, Van Horn was back. He was undeterred by
the barbed wire, lifting boy after boy of the boat’s
crew over it and dropping them sprawling into the
boat, following himself, as the last, by swinging over
on the spanker boom, and calling his last instructions
as the painters were cast off.

“Get a riding light on deck, Borckman.
Keep her hove to. Don’t hoist the mainsail.
Clean up the decks and bend the watch tackle on the
main boom.”

He took the steering-sweep and encouraged the rowers
with: “Washee-washee, good fella, washee-washee!”—­which
is the beche-de-mer for “row hard.”

As he steered, he kept flashing the torch on the boat
compass so that he could keep headed north-east by
east a quarter east. Then he remembered that
the boat compass, on such course, deviated two whole
points from the Arangi’s compass, and
altered his own course accordingly.

Occasionally he bade the rowers cease, while he listened
and called for Jerry. He had them row in circles,
and work back and forth, up to windward and down to
leeward, over the area of dark sea that he reasoned
must contain the puppy.